Senza Fili Sparring Partners

Digital twins give us the unprecedented opportunity to explore alternative worlds or scenarios where things are similar to the real ones, but differ from them in subtle ways, so we can see how things look like if only we make a few changes. It is a fascinating way to explore the possible but also to avoid failures, assess the impact and benefits of network changes or new technologies, and compare different decisions before implemen...

In the past, we used to test networks, not user experience. What really matters today, however, is user experience, and that requires a different approach to testing. Network tests may fail to uncover problems with user experience.

I spoke with Irina Cotanis, an Independent Technical Consultant I have known for a long time, while she was at Infovista, about how user experience testing is evolving to cover both human and non-human u...

Everybody seems to think that AI will create a massive increase in traffic. The prediction sounds eerily similar to what we heard about 5G, before it got deployed. Sean Kinney, Editor in Chief at RCR Wireless News, and I beg to differ. We agree through most of the discussion, which is great because our view is definitely not in line with the industry consensus. Listen to the podcast if you want to hear something different.

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We usually look at the present or the future of technologies. In this podcast with Mansoor Hanif, Independent Executive Advisor, we took a look at the past. What were the challenges for network automation six years ago? What did we expect? In one of the first Sparring Partners on automation included in this report, I talked to Mansoor while he was at BT about zero-touch automation, AI and much more. He then moved to Ofcom and Neom,...

Training data determines how good AI models are. As with any type of learning, you need good teachers and content. In telecoms, there is more data than we need, but not all is good or relevant. One way to get AI models trained on the right data is to share data across sources—operators, vendors and others.

I talked to Paul Patras, Co-founder and CEO at Net AI, and Professor of Mobile Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, abo...

Our identity, who we are, is increasingly becoming defined by our online self. For many of us, our LinkedIn presence has become the main or a major channel for professional social media. What happens if that disappears overnight? Literally during the night. You no longer have access to it, and someone else with a different gender, name and nationality takes over.

This is what happened to Frazer McKimm, Director at New Way Networks,...

It seems fitting to have a podcast on ageism after a popular one with Simona Marinova on attracting young talent in telecoms.

Ageism is not only hard on the people affected by it, but also limits the ability of the industry to benefit from the experience of the senior workforce. At the same time, letting older people run the show may also slow down innovation and make telecoms less appealing to the younger generations.

I talked to ...

It was after the Sparring Partners with Markus Kümmerle, Chair of Marketing at CAMARA and Magenta API Exposure Tribe Leader, Deutsche Telekom, that I decided to write my report on APIs, and so we came full circle in getting an update on APIs and getting Markus' feedback on the report.

We started talking about how Wi-Fi and cellular APIs need to coexist and then went further into fixed APIs and non-telco APIs—those provided by Googl...

Most of the talk today is on network APIs, but the universe of APIs is much bigger, and it is not only proprietary, non-telco, and Wi-Fi APIs. The TM Forum APIs have been around for a long time and have been widely adopted by service providers.

I talked with Andy Tiller, EVP Products and Services at TMF, about what the TMF APIs do, what different role and functionality they have compared to network APIs (the CAMARA and GSMA Open Ga...

Telecoms has become a mature industry after decades of explosive growth. How do we manage innovation, the introduction of new technologies, and the growth expectations in this new environment?

I talked with Joel Brand, at AVP Product Management at Marvell, about how we can adjust to the new environment and what changes we need to make. Telecoms has been and still is an astounding success, even though we often complain about not mee...

Most indoor connectivity already goes through Wi-Fi. Why do we need Passpoint to improve access to Wi-Fi networks? How can a Wi-DAS deployment help? Howard Buzick, Co-Founder at American Bandwidth, told us how Passpoint makes our Wi-Fi connections more seamless and secure and how American Bandwidth helps retail, healthcare, education and government organizations use Passpoint and a Wi-DAS architecture to make it easier to connect t...

If you use public transportation across countries, you probably noticed how much easier it is to pay with your phone in Europe or Asia than in the US. In part, this may be due to the more limited public transportation infrastructure and use and lower use of contactless payments for non-cash payments (half that of Europe).

But what I learned from talking to Jim Allison, Manager of Planning, Capitol Corridor Joint Power Authority (CC...

Commercial adoption of APIs is still in the early days in most markets, but there are a few exceptions. Brazil is one of them, with operators offering them to app developers and getting revenues from them, supported by market demand and a facilitating regulatory environment. I talked with Leonardo Siqueira, Data Monetization and Mobile Ads Director at TIM Brazil, about the API rollout from 2023, the use cases, business models and w...

It is hard to overstate the need for more indoor capacity and better coverage when you think that over 80% of traffic comes from indoor locations. And to address this need, we need more indoor infrastructure. But what’s the best way to get there? DAS or small cells? Or is Wi-Fi enough?

I talked to Upendra Pingle, General Manager, Indoor Cellular Networks at ANDREW, an Ampehnol company, one of the most passionate advocates of indoor...

Dean Bubley at Disruptive Analysis and I had a broad and deep discussion on the future of private networks as we move to 6G. We talked about indoor coverage, Wi-Fi networks, standardization, 3GPP and future adoption. But I do not want to spoil your experience, so you have to listen to know what our answers are.

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What do DeepSeek and agentic AI have in common? They show how AI and GenAI are evolving. They are not just getting better. They are spreading out in multiple directions to better meet our needs, to be more efficient, and, ultimately, to make the adoption of AI easier and more compelling.

Siavash Alamouti, Co-Founder and Chairman at mimik, presents a fascinating and compelling vision of how AI is evolving, and a precise and insightf...

Everybody talks about AI-RAN, but it is often unclear what they mean by it, how it relates to Open RAN, how AI will change the RAN evolution, and what AI in the RAN will help operators support new services or improve current ones.

Alex Jinsung Choi, Principal Fellow at SoftBank Corp. and Chair at the AI-RAN Alliance, explains it all with great clarity and a clear vision for what RAN evolution is about, drawing from his previous wor...

Telecom is no longer the magnet for talent that it was when I joined. Talented people entering the job market now often prefer to work for hyperscalers or other high-tech companies. Why is it so? And how can we make telecom more attractive to the younger generations?

I talked to one of the super-talented young people, Simona Marinova, Solution Architect at Bell Canada, who bucked the trend and joined Bell Canada while doing her Ph....

Yago Tenorio just moved to Verizon as SVP and CTO from Vodafone—and from Europe to the US. We talked about how Europe and the US compare, what he will do at Verizon, what the future holds for Open RAN and what 2025 looks like for telecom.

As always, Yago has deep and unique insights into the technology and the market, and in this conversation, we went off the beaten path to explore new perspectives on technology evolution – how we ...